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ART CENTRAL HONG KONG | JAMES OSTRER | 2016

Article added 29.02.2016

Gazelli Art House and James Ostrer to present new installation, The Ego System at the Art Central in Hong Kong.

Following from the Wotsit All About series that captured headlines around the world, James Ostrer and London-based gallery, Gazelli Art House announces his latest body of work.

Emotional DownloadsAfter smearing his subjects with sugary coloured cream cheese and icing to explore the darker side of the fetishisation of sweets and junk food, his latest portraits are an amalgamation of celebrity icons, who seduce their onlookers through traditional and social media with their promises of success, beauty and glamour. Ostrer describes these works as ‘honesty portraits’, an externalistion of the media data that he has consumed day-to-day. Ostrer explains, “I am responding to the vast divide between what we are being sold and what we are actually getting. I’ve labelled them ‘Emotional Downloads’, which stand as a reaction against corporately contrived icons, the myth bearers that we are increasingly forced to worship.”

False prophets and myth bearers
Among his subjects are those who Ostrer feels embodies John Updike’s dictum that celebrity is a mask that eats its own face, including Donald Trump, Tiger Woods, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. A number of celebrities feature in this series, including Harry Styles, Damian Hirst and Miley Cyrus. Simultaneously celebrated and criticised, Ostrer feels that many stars today represent the embodiment of success and the ultimate construction of false value. Ostrer says, he created the artworks because he wanted to underpin his own and our collective obsessions with the glorication of celebrity and its dark and seedy underside.

PHOTO LONDON | 2016

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